The present invention generally relates to a motor vehicle and more particularly, to a supporting structure of a steering column at the instrument panel or dash panel portion of a motor vehicle.
Conventionally, for supporting a steering column on the body of a motor vehicle, there has been employed a structure in which the steering column is secured to the instrument panel or fixed to an inner side panel frame through a bracket or the like. However, in the arrangement for supporting the steering column on the inner side panel as described above, since rigidity of inner side panels tends to be poor due to the recent trend for producing them by plastic molding, there are such disadvantages that the steering wheel is subjected to vibrations during high speed driving through reduction of the rigidity of mounting or that sufficient rigidity of mounting can not be obtained owing to a considerably long span of the inner side panel in a lateral direction.
In conventional arrangements, air from an air conditioner such as a heater, cooler or the like is led through a duct toward the opposite sides of the forward portion of a driver's cab for being discharged therefrom, but such a duct has an undesirable bent or winding shape in order to avoid wirings in the lower portion of the instrument panel, the steering column and its supporting members and the like, and has such drawbacks that not only it is difficult to manufacture, but presents a large resistance to the air passing therethrough, with a simultaneous increase in its weight owing to the complicated configuration thereof. In order to overcome the disadvantages as described above, there have also been proposed recently certain arrangements in which simplification of the construction, utilization of limited spaces, etc. are sought by integrally forming the inner side panel and duct into one unit by molding or the like, but these prior art arrangements still have some problems to be solved for complete elimination of the drawbacks as described earlier.